Still, any high death rate or high readmission rate is something prospective patients should talk to their doctor or hospital about.

It’s also something the hospital should examine closely and improve upon, said Stephanie Suran, a spokeswoman for the Pennsylvania Health Care Cost Containment Council, which issued the report.

Good Samaritan Hospital in Lebanon had significantly higher than expected death rates for patients treated for congestive heart failure, infectious pneumonia and respiratory failure.

Holy Spirit Hospital in Cumberland County had significantly higher than expected death rates for heart attack patients treated with medication rather than surgery, and respiratory patients on breathing ventilators.

Penn State Milton S. Hershey Medical Center had one significantly higher than expected death rate for patients with blood poisoning. It also had high readmission rates for three things.

Harrisburg-based PinnacleHealth System had no high death rates. It had high readmission rates for three things.

Carlisle Regional Medical Center was one of 48 hospitals that had no higher than expected death or readmission rates.

Spokesman Bill Mulligan said Good Samaritan’s high death rates were all in categories in which the hospital had low numbers of cases, “which contributed to a few very sick patients skewing the results.” In each case, there were only two or three more deaths than expected, he said.

However, the cost containment council said it “risk adjusts” for patients’ varying levels of illness.

Mulligan also said that, while Good Samaritan had a higher than expected death rate for congestive heart failure, it also rated better than expected for readmissions and length of stay in the same category, a reflection of efforts to deliver high-quality care.

Pinnacle said: “We are quite pleased with these results which, across a broad range of categories, validate our commitment to patient-centered quality care, safety and outcomes.”

The goals of the report are to help people compare hospitals and to put public pressure on hospitals to improve.

The reports can be a sensitive subject for hospital officials, who sometimes quibble over methodology and worry they will alarm rather than inform patients.

But businesses who pay for health care or advocates who want to empower patients have embraced the reports. They said such information is a key to improving health care quality and lowering costs.

Suran said the report is a “snapshot ... it’s not a list of good and bad hospitals.”

“Patients can’t just add up black dots and assume that a hospital with more of them is a bad hospital,” she said, referring to the symbols contained in the report.

Rather, the report is one of the tools they should use in choosing a hospital, she said.

The report examines outcomes for conditions such as abnormal heartbeat, congestive heart failure and stroke, and medical procedures such as abdominal aortic aneurysm repair, gallbladder removal and hip fracture repair.

Much of the focus is on whether a higher than expected number of patients died or had to be readmitted within 30 days because of medical complications.

While readmissions aren’t always the fault of the hospital, top-notch care can reduce readmissions.

Statewide, the report found that in 20 categories included in the report annually since 2002, the death rate has dropped consistently, to 4.1 percent, or slightly more than four patients out of every 100.

Similarly, it noted that readmission rates also have fallen significantly over the years, although they may have plateaued at about 19 percent.

The highest death rate, 27.6 percent, was for respiratory patients who needed a breathing ventilator.

The Hospital & Healthsystem Association of Pennsylvania said the report shows that hospitals' efforts to lower death and readmission rates are succeeding.

“As with last week’s cardiac surgery report from [the cost containment council], the hospital community will use the information in the hospital performance report to further reduce mortality and to help identify the causes of readmissions and implement evidence-based strategies to reduce those readmissions that are preventable,” said Carolyn F. Scanlan, president of the hospital association.

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